6 Ways to Guarantee Success Working with Interior Designers

Posted on 05 November 2018

Once you’ve secured a commission or sold a piece to interior designers and trade buyers, what can you do to maintain, and even improve, your working relationship so that you can guarantee success in the future? Interior designers and trade buyers want the same things their customers and clients do—they want to be served and satisfied.

While there are innumerable ways to make your own clients—namely interior designers and trade buyers—happy, I’ve whittled them down to 6 Ways to Guarantee Success Working with Interior Designers and Trade Buyers.

Artist Tips on working with Interior Designers

Artist duo KX2 Art is very successful in creating commissioned works for their clients because they practice these 6 tips:

1. Be Flexible

This seems painfully obvious, but it’s true. Trade buyers and interior designers aren’t the ones calling the shots—their clients are. So don’t be surprised if dates shift, plans change, budgets change, or meetings get canceled. Interior designers and trade buyers are, like you, trying to keep their clients happy and maintain a positive relationship. This requires that everyone be a little flexible. That’s not to say you can’t charge for your time and work, but it does mean you maintain a gracious and understanding attitude when things don’t work out perfectly. A trade buyer or an interior designer will be much more likely to hire you again if you are easy to work with and accommodating.

"We recently completed a commission for a client ofAccetraArts who found us in Blink Art Resource. We worked closely with them to create a custom piece for a large stairwell. This piece was basedona large-scale existing piece of ours "Disco Volante" but was transformed in various ways to suit the client. We sent a sample piece, worked through color options and negotiated a new element to our work (the metallic separation line) to address the clients'needs." KX2 Art, Blink Art Artist since 2017

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2. Be Professional

While you have to be flexible with your clients, they may not always be—or can be—as flexible as you, because their own clients are making demands that they’re trying to appease. So it’s best to operate as professionally as possible. This means responding to emails and phone calls immediately. Responsiveness can make or break client relationships. Another is to adhere to the budgets that the interior designer or trade buyer has set. They are often given these budgets by their clients and don’t have a lot of flexibility. So you need to be sure you’re doing whatever you can to execute the order on time and on budget.

2. Be Humble

Now we’re not saying you can’t be proud of the work you do, but you don’t want to be so proud that you can’t take a suggestion or a criticism. Try not to be easily offended when an interior designer or trade buyer asks you to change or modify a piece of work to match their client's taste or specifications, especially when working on a commissioned piece. Don’t take it as a personal attack on your work, the client may just prefer different colors, textures, or size.

3. Be Transparent

You want to be as clear as you can about your pricing and commission-payment structure up front (for example, do you expect to be paid 30% upfront, 30% midway, and 30% upon completion of the project or do you expect to receive flat payment upon submission?) You also want to be honest about your schedule and the time you have to commit to a project. If you don’t think you can make a deadline, say so. Better to be in communication with your client than leave them disappointed. By being completely transparent from the beginning about your own expectations and limitations, you will avoid awkward conversations in the future.

4. Be Accessible

Keep your website up to date with quality photos of available work and recently finished projects. If you are willing to do commission work, be sure to state that on your website. Designers are always looking for specific sizes and colors for their projects. Also, make it as easy as you can to navigate your website and to contact you. Make clearly visible your email address and phone number. You don’t want to lose out on a potential client because they had to click through too many pages to find your contact form.

5. Don’t Poach

We’re not talking eggs here. We’re talking clients. When we say don’t poach an interior designer or trade buyer’s clients, we mean don’t go around an interior designer or trade buyer's back and contact their client directly to sell the work to them. Yes, it seems like a lot of money interior designers and trade buyers get in commission from selling your work, but in the long run, they could sell a lot of your work for you (all the while incurring the costs of marketing, selling, and spending time keeping a client happy). And know that an interior designer’s or trade buyer’s clients may try to reach out to you, often to save themselves some money and cut out the middleman. You don’t want to damage long-held relationships or potential future relationships with the interior designer or trade buyer for a short-term gain.

Know that trade buyers, art consultants, and interior designers are your partners and are looking to serve both you and their clients at the same time. I work with interior designers and trade buyers every day to help them find the artists and the work that will best serve their projects. One of the ways I do this is by sharing our trade catalog, Blink Art Resource, with clients. If you’re an artist who wants to work with trade buyers and interior designers, Blink Art Resource reaches over 10,000 designers, trade buyers and art collectors each year. To learn more about how you can be featured in Blink Art click here.

2019 Talent Search for Blink Art Resource

Blink Art Resourcewas created as a promotional platform for artists in 2015 to have their work seen and sourced by designers for a variety of corporate, healthcare, residential, and hospitality projects. Even though there is an online component, we’re not just another online art marketplace. Each year we publish a print catalog and distribute it to 10,000+ top-grossing interior designers, art consultants and art dealers in North America. Not only does this put your artwork at their fingertips, the best thing about Blink Art Resource is that you work with the designer directly and get to keep 100% of the commission!

If you are interested in being a Blink Artist, contact our director Amy Whisenhunt at amy@adcfineart.com to discuss details and review your portfolio.

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Meet Litsa

Litsa Spanos – loving wife and mother of three – is an established art consultant, award-winning gallery owner, custom framer and educator. In this blog, Litsa shares with you her love for beautiful things. She will give you an exclusive look into the world of fine art and the artists who create it. She will also let you in on inspirational design ideas that are sure to give your home or office energy, warmth and reflect your own personal style.